It's a shame to have to attach a rating to "Mister Lonely." As a work of entertainment, as a cohesive narrative and as an artistic whole, there's no way to call it anything but an on-balance average effort. Yet there's nothing remotely average about the movie's warm spirit, its imaginative and arresting cinematography or its handful of unique, brilliant scenes and shrewd, bizarre performances.

Like Francis Ford Coppola's "Youth Without Youth," the film has overarching problems yet contains diamonds of clarity and inspiration that you won't find in any dozen movies. You'll have to mine for those diamonds, though.

"Mister Lonely" is the first film in nine years from director Harmony Korine ("Gummo"), who was praised and vilified in the 1990s as either the next big thing or a sign of the apocalypse. He was neither. His latest effort finds him as a still-emerging talent, a filmmaker of heart, vision and innovation who yet has a touch of the young man's disease: The belief that story doesn't matter and that if you're clever and special enough - that is, if you're enough of an amazing genius - no one will mind being bored.

This might sound like the setup for a movie too cute for its own good, but well before we get to Scotland, virtually from the film's first minutes, Korine creates a contemplative mood. Using jump cuts, he films "Michael," in a continuous long shot, performing on a street in Paris, and the sincerity and absurdity of what Korine shows us is moving (in a pathetic way). Michael's first conversation with Marilyn takes place along a tree-lined boulevard, which Korine films through a fishbowl lens, so that as the two move toward us, the trees seem to be pulling away. These are magical people with huge longings, he seems to be saying, people as innocent as children.

In keeping with this theme of innocence, Korine introduces a secondary plot that has nothing to do with the main story, involving a nun who falls out of an airplane while airlifting food to starving children. To see that nun falling through the sky is to be in no doubt of Korine's talents. The sight is arresting and strangely poignant, and it's also visceral in an unexpected way. At one point, he places the camera so that we can almost feel the rush of air. People who skydive describe the experience as like standing still over a high-powered fan, but this is the first time I've ever seen that aspect simulated onscreen.

Werner Herzog, who usually works on the other side of the camera, appears as the priest who pilots the food drops, and he has what might be the best scene in the movie. In what seems like an extemporized conversation, Herzog harangues a man to give up his adulterous ways, and the whole spectacle is strange in that we're not sure what we're seeing. The object of this lecture is a non-actor. Is he playing himself? Does he even know that Herzog isn't a priest? It's hard to know where the artifice ends and reality begins, but in any case, the scene has a strange truth about it.

Korine's intuitive approach gives us moments like that, as well as the inspired casting of another director, Leos Carax, as Michael's psychiatrist. (It's impossible to take your eyes off him.) But while Korine has an instinct for emotion and for arresting character combination, he doesn't have a similar gift for the dramatic. His challenge as a filmmaker will be to figure out the right balance between impulse and control, between intuition and structural sophistication. Also, he needs to start seeing narrative, not as a necessary evil, but as a tool for putting across the powerful emotions and ideas that are at the source of his inspiration.

Korine is one step away from being great, but it's a big step. As it stands, "Mister Lonely," for all its luster, loses steam after about an hour.

-- Advisory: Strong language, suggested violence.

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